Best Signature Gift (2007)

Thanks to the enterprising folks over at Rose Vine Winery, you can now do in a Federal Highway shopping plaza what it took Robert Mondavi acres and acres of expensive Napa Valley real estate to do: make your own wine. First, a winemaking specialist lets you sample a range of flavors and explains concepts like fermentation, clarification, and aeration. Do you want to make a fine Merlot? A peach Chardonnay? Something more akin to Boone's Farm? Once you've decided, mix different varieties of grape juice concentrates, which makes the potion more oaky or as sweet as you please. Add yeast (yeast + sugars = alcohol), take the temperature, and leave the mixture at the shop for about 45 days. (A winemaker will monitor it.) When you come back, you bottle your wine using high-tech electric bottling equipment, design your own labels, and stick corks in each of the 24 bottles your batch has produced. It costs $249  just over $10 a bottle!